Spring has sprung all over the country. April showers hit during the second day at the Dogwood Crosstown Classic in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. Boy I sure don't like to play in the rain. I dropped from 1st place on Saturday to a tie for 8th at the finish. Dave, who was in second Saturday evening, is who I was tied with. We edged out Avery by a few strokes. Avery seems to be developing a long-term relationship with the Shule Monkey. Climo was in town and finished 3rd. Walt 'Snoop' Haney won the tournament by a couple strokes over Barry Schultz. Snoop played great and putted great.

While in town we stayed at Dave Mansfield's new house north of Raleigh along with Team Wendell, Climo, Roadhouse, Hosfeld, and the Flying Eye crew. Dave's new house is sweeeet. Out in the country and pretty large. We putted and played a bunch of games of Gollum with a cool whip top.

We hung around until Tuesday night and then started the drive to Gainesville, Florida for the Gator Country Classic. As usual we left town around midnight so we wouldn't have to deal with too much traffic. It turns out that there are no 24-hour gas stations out in the country. We asked around but it looked like we were outta luck until the morning. I know that there was some gas in the big tank in the Winnie so I attempted to re-wire the rig to run off the big tank. It worked and we made it to a 24-hour gas stop. Things were looking up until I blew a tire about 15 miles later. We were on our way to Tarboro to meet up with Team Wendell, who had Dave's golf bag in their Dolphin. We pulled into the outlying area and went to sleep at a truck stop. Next morning Maddog McRee came out and helped us locate a new tire. We got a radial for $200. Onward we trekked. It took about 200 more miles before another tire blew out. This time we pulled into a Motel 6 so we could take some showers. We spent the night and picked up a $160 radial the next morning. The remaining drive to Gainesville was uneventful.

We pulled into Northside Park in Gainesville, Florida to the cheers of the Gurthie kids. We love those kids. We set up in our usual spot right next to hole #2 and had a great week. disctv was there taping for the first show and they caught all the action... a little too much action sometimes. Dave and Kenny were battling it out for the win and one of Dave's roller shots hit a camera tripod at a critical juncture during the final nine.. It may or may not have made a difference (Dave was three strokes down with three holes to play) but Dave took it well and played on to a 2nd place finish. Cam Todd was 3rd and Brian Schweberger was 4th. I finished in a tie with Ben Gurthie for the last two cash spots and the Shule Monkey.

Shawn Harrigan ran the tournament with the players in mind as usual. There were a bunch of great CTP prizes from 'Famous Faces' (lithograph paintings) and plenty of good food for everyone. We hung out for a couple days then drove back up to Chapel Hill, NC for the Tar Heel Tournament, a B-tier.

On the drive north we passed through some rain during the night. The wipers wouldn't work so I pulled into a truck stop to wait it out. We trekked on in the morning and got to the Chapel Hill course Wednesday night. Sweet course for the most part... just a few crummy holes that had to be put in due to some new softball fields that were installed on the University of NC campus. Mark Southard put together a fun tournament and disctv was onsite to record the proceedings for the next show. Brian Schweberger won, Cam was 2nd, I tied for 3rd with Walt 'Snoop' Haney, and Larry Leonard was 5th. Avery got the Shule Monkey back for Bowling Green next weekend. There was a skins match final-9 where the top 5 pushed every hole and split the $250 when it was over.

We stayed with Justin Jablonski while we were in town and got to watch a few good movies. Pootie Tang is a crack up of a movie. I recommend it. We relaxed on Monday and now (Tuesday morning) we are getting ready to make the 12 hour drive over to Bowling Green, KY for the Bowling Green Open. It's a HUGE tournament where we get the chance to make some good money and get a little bit ahead on things.

-Todd and crew

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